Middle East

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A CNN exclusive by Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne reveals that Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi told the US, “I need to know if you are capable of protecting my people, of stopping these bombs falling on us or not. I need to know, because if you’re not, I need to […]

Featured

Turkey Shells position of US Special Forces in Syria, almost Provokes Firefight

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tom O’Connor , James LaPorta AND Naveed Jamali at Newsweek report that the Turkish military subjected a position occupied by between 20 and 100 US special forces personnel embedded with the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) to heavy artillery fire. Turkey has invaded northeast Syria for the purpose of ethnically […]

Donald Trump

Turkish Military Operation in Syria puts Large Numbers of Civilians at Risk

Human Rights Watch

Key Concerns Include Unlawful Attacks, Treatment of Displaced People, Arbitrary Arrests

Israel/ Palestine

South Africans advise Palestinians on how Apartheid can be Overcome

Middle East Monitor

Ramzy Baroud | @RamzyBaroud | – The way to truly defeat Apartheid: A conversation with Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally “Perhaps the time has come for Palestinians and justice-loving Israelis to imagine a new future,” wrote South African intellectuals and academics, Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally, in their essay, “Beyond Ethnic Nationalism: Lessons from South […]

Kurds

Turkish attack on Syria endangers a remarkable democratic experiment by the Kurds

The Conversation

By James L. Gelvin | – Turkey’s attack on Kurdish-run territory in northern Syria will likely snuff out a radical experiment in self-government that is unlike anything I have seen in more than 30 years studying the Middle East. In a surprise Oct. 6 statement, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw its troops […]

Israel/ Palestine

An Expansionist State? Did Israel ever have any intention of honoring either the 1947 Partition Plan or 1967 borders?

Middle East Monitor

By Thomas Suárez | – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to annex parts of the occupied West Bank if re-elected in last month’s General Election, eliciting outrage from world leaders. However, that “promise” to usurp not just the West Bank, but all of Palestine, is century-old news, an ongoing promise being kept, and no […]

Iraq

Did Bush put Iraq on Road to Democracy? Not to Judge by the Violent Crackdown on Protesters

The Conversation

By Balsam Mustafa | – When Muhanad Habib, a 22-year-old Iraqi from the Sadr City district of Baghdad, posted on Facebook in late September, he probably didn’t imagine that his demands for a better life and basic rights would be met with bullets. It will be a huge and angry public revolution in Baghdad … […]

Featured

Not Just Ethnicity: Turkey v. Kurds and the Great Divide over Political Islam v. the Secular Left

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkey’s incursion into Syria has roiled the Middle East and NATO countries, demonstrating one key polarizing divide on both sides of the Mediterranean. That divide is between supporters of political Islam and its opponents. By political Islam I mean movements like the Muslim Brotherhood that make Islam more than a […]

Iraq

On Yom Kippur, remembering the Diversity Iraq’s Mosul has Lost with Nationalism and ISIL

The Conversation

By Stephennie Mulder | – On Yom Kippur each year, as Jews around the world pray for atonement, the biblical Book of Jonah is read in its entirety. Jews recall the story of how God summons Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to tell its inhabitants to turn from their evil deeds. At […]